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The Black-white disparity in imprisonment has narrowed substantially over 20 years, but very little of the progress can be attributed to state sentencing reforms, says the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ).
After analyses that documented a 40% drop in the Black-White imprisonment disparity between 2000 and 2020, researchers at CCJ, Georgia State University, and the Crime and Justice Institute examined more than 700 statutes adopted in 12 states between 2010 and 2020.
Laws studied related to violent, property, and drug crimes, as well as parole release and technical violation practices. The study states --Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, New York, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah -- varied by region, demographic composition, sentencing structure, and the political party in power.
The analysis found that the sentencing reforms had negligible impacts on reducing racial disparities, and instead largely codified changes to enforcement, policing, charging, and sentencing practices that had occurred before the laws were enacted.
The findings suggest that factors beyond sentencing laws were mostly responsible for the Black-white imprisonment disparity declining from 8.2-to-1 in 2000 to 4.9-to-1 in 2020. Though the study did not statistically assess alternative explanations, the authors cited changes in policing practices, drug use (from cocaine to opioids), how drugs are sold (from open-air markets to the use of GPS-equipped smartphones), and the types of crimes people commit (from burglary to cybercrime, for example).
“Troubling racial disparities persist in our criminal justice system, but the narrowing we’ve seen since the turn of the century is encouraging,” said CCJ president Adam Gelb. “These new findings shed critical light on the path forward, showing us that we need to look beyond sentencing to identify the policy levers that can promote fairness and equity.”
The analysis found that racial disparity in imprisonment for violent offenses saw the smallest reduction between 2000 and 2020. Because two-thirds of incarcerated people are serving time for violent crimes, further progress on disparities requires using evidence-based strategies to reduce violence in Black communities and addressing differences in the prison time Black and white people serve for similar offenses, said report co-author Thaddeus Johnson, a Georgia State University criminologist.
“We must confront the role of criminal history in sentencing and release policies, because Black people tend to have disproportionate contact with the justice system,” Johnson said. “The reality is that unless we address historic and structural inequities in Black communities and grapple with the length of prison terms for serious violent crime, disparities will persist.”